Sustainability Assessment of Basin-wide Water Supply and Demand Scenarios using Intelligent Decision ‎System (IDS) Model

Nowadays, water resources management in Lake Urmia and its restoration is one of the most important issues in Iran. One of the important reasons for the critical situation of the Lake Urmia basin is the lack of proper allocation of different parts (i.e. the required water for Lake Urmia). It is also important to consider the implications of lake water allocation to agricultural, environmental, potable, and industrial demand nodes. This paper intends to quantitatively evaluate these effects on different parts over 60 years under two management scenarios including full and partial allocation of Lake Urmia water requirement in the context of sustainability. For this purpose, three performance criteria such as reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability were evaluated in Lake Urmia basin. In the next step, using the concept of Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach, the sustainability of water resource management scenarios was investigated. The results showed that full allocation of the Lake Urmia water requirement resulted in reduced water allocation to the agricultural sector which may have different socio-cultural-political consequences. In spite of decline of water allocation in the agricultural sector in the first scenario (full allocation of Lake Urmia water requirement), this scenario was chosen as the top scenario. Also, the results of this paper indicate that the full allocation of Urmia Lake water requirement is a priority, which has led to the greater general sustainability of the Urmia Lake basin. Finally, it is suggested to further evaluate the sustainability of the agricultural sector by implementing different management scenarios.